franklanguage: my little terrier (Corky)
It's been awhile; today, I had a slightly grueling day taking Corky up to the Animal Medical Center to be diagnosed. He's had ataxia and weakness in his hind legs for some time, so I decided that in the wake of his being cured of Cushing's syndrome a few months ago I wanted to find out what else was going on—since he was still incontinent, and I would have thought that symptom would ease up if the Cushing's weren't an issue.

Turns out they found spinal stenosis. There's no cure, no treatment to speak of, beyond palliative care. Currently, I have to give him strict crate-rest for 4 to 6 weeks—even after he seems to be getting better.

He's 11, but he's not an old dog; I mean, he seems older than he is because he has such difficulty walking. (I was plan nasty to a woman this morning who cocked her head and smiled before asking, "Is he an old dog?" "Leave me alone!" I bellowed. I was in no mood for chit-chat.)

I usually have to carry him; I have to carry him both up and down all five flights of stairs in my building—which I'm resigned to. You do what you can for the ones you love.

I'd like to get him a photonic-therapy unit—and now that there's a distributor in this country, I may do that; when I last checked, the only contact in the whole world was an address in Australia. When I mentioned it to the vet I saw last week, she thought it was a tall order for me to go learning all the acupuncture points, but I think it would be on an as-needed basis.

Unfortunately, he pooped in the front hall of the building earlier when I was carrying him out—and I didn't notice. Carmen—the woman in the front apartment, who's the de facto super and package receiver for the building—wrote a misspelled note and taped it to the glass of the front door about how tenants weren't supposed to let their dogs poop in the hallway without cleaning it up. Most tenants don't have to carry their dogs both ways.

I'm tired.
franklanguage: (Default)
Arthritis may be incurable…but it is preventable. At the very least, it can be minimized; there are a few sites that say it can be managed with a lowfat plant-based diet.

There's a very good documentary that came out maybe a year or so ago called Forks Over Knives that proposes that most "Western" diseases of excess can be reduced or eliminated with a plant-based diet. (And diabetes is on the list.) I know this flies in the face of conventional wisdom that says that for some—even many—conditions, a high-fat, animal-protein based, ketogenic diet is one of them. For instance, I'm not about to argue with my friend in California who's treating his epileptic son with such a diet.



However, when you consider that Asian people who were basically free of heart disease, cancer, and most degenerative diseases are now developing a Western-style disease profile now that their diet is changing from a plant-based one to one that's heavy in meat and dairy, you have to question the wisdom of such a system. Large-scale animal production also causes many environmental problems that would simply not be present if the land were for growing plants to feed directly to people, rather than to feed to animals who are fed to people.

There's a documentary called Vegucated which follows three meat- and cheese-loving New Yorkers when they agree to give up meat and dairy for six weeks:



I realize most people aren't inclined to change, but I just wanted to put this out there. We can't continue expanding animal production, especially in the regions of Asia and South America where they formerly ate a plant-based diet. I know that only about 3% of all people in the world are vegan, but that number has to change, or we as a species will die out, and sooner than later. Maybe that's a good thing.
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